


summertime

by attice



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/M, Genderswap, always-a-girl!Bucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:33:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attice/pseuds/attice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What are you thinking about?” Peggy asks, suddenly.</p>
<p><i>A girl,</i> you want to say, but what you really say is, “The war.” You figure that’s close enough, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	summertime

The way this fairy tale is headed, you’re going to fall in love and live happily ever after. Isn’t that the way these things ought to end? Friends from the day she picked you off the playground and helped you wash your bloody knees, friends from the day she stole a candy bar from Mr. Torrance’s corner store and you took the blame, friends from the day you saw her walking down the street with a black eye and a dress three inches too short and invited her in for a Coke and some baseball radio. No doubt about it, now. You’ve read enough books to know that this ending has to be happy. It wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.

Did you know all of this when you first invited her in? Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t; maybe she was just some girl off the street, and maybe she didn’t mean more to you than any of the kids that you stood up for and invariably got beaten up for doing so. Maybe, but now it’s done, and maybe you will be, too, someday.

Bucky’s eleven when she says she’s never gonna get married, no, never gonna wear lipstick. She’s not gonna go to college, never gonna wear a skirt. She’ll fight. Yeah, she’s gonna cut her hair and join the army right next to you, Steve-o, and together you’ll be unstoppable.

 

-

 

Five minutes in, and you know it’s too late.

The bouncer sizes you up—a tiny blond with a strong-shouldered brunette next to him—an odd pair. Fresh-faced, like you’ve never actually tasted the bottom of a bottle of the god-awful moonshine they’re selling inside—like that’s gonna fly. In the end, he raises his eyebrows at you, and you and Bucky share a look.

_What’re we gonna—_

“Run,” she shouts, but it’s like a gun’s gone off too close to your ear—all of your muscles clench up, and Bucky starts, darting out of the spotlight, notices that you’re not there next to her, turns around, sees you frozen, and comes back to drag you away.

 

-

 

There are back doors. You don’t let Bucky go through any of them. _Gals don’t belong in prison,_ you say, but what you really mean is _you don’t belong in prison._         

That’s when you’re sixteen. Things change.

 

-

 

“Whatsa matter with you, anyway?” he asks, and a heavy hand to the back knocks the breath clean out of your lungs. You drop your pencil so you can reach under the table and gasp for air properly. Neither of them notice, anyway.

“Knock it off, Jack,” Bucky says, but she has her red lipstick on and she’s grinning and you know that she likes this guy more than you’d care to admit. You bend down again, hiding the red in your face under the desk as you scrabble for the pencil, and when you sit back up, Jack’s hand is on Bucky’s thigh and your head is spinning too fast.

“This guy doesn’t know how to have fun.” Jack takes a swig out of his bottle and looks at you like you’re one of those hung-up chickens in the butcher shop. “Where’s your gal, anyway?”

You shrug. Sally—Sally, blonde and blue-eyed and a good foot taller than you. She’s probably in one of those grimy bathroom stalls with a broad-chested, dark-eyed military guy. They have things that you don’t—jokes, and deep laughter, and hands that are quick with buttons and skirts and mouths. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, because, in the end, it doesn’t.

You’re twenty years old. Two years ago—

You looks up at Bucky, and she looks at Jack, and he looks at the sea of bodies ten feet away. You wonder exactly how this happened.         

“Wanna dance?” Jack asks.

 

-

 

Bucky sits next to you at the funeral so her thigh touches yours.

You’re eighteen, and your twelve year-old cousins from Maine are still taller than you. Everyone’s crying, but you’re not—you know this isn’t really happening. Maybe it’s happened before, and maybe it’ll happen again, but your ma really isn’t gone. She’s only out of sight, you know, as they let her into the earth.

“You okay?” Bucky murmurs, standing next to you. Her forearm brushes yours, and you twitch away even though it didn’t matter before—she’d press up against you when you were hiding in ratty alleys and under stoops, so close you could taste her breath. It never mattered then, and you tell yourself it doesn’t matter now.

You don’t look her in the eyes when you say yeah, yeah, I’m fine, and you don’t look her in the eyes when she grabs your shoulders and asks you if you wanna go.

“They’re giving speeches,” you say, and Bucky gets a look in her eyes when she hears the tone of your voice, but she only drops her hands and follows you, sits next to you so her thigh touches yours.           

Bucky doesn’t give a speech, and neither do you.          

It’s October when your mother dies.

 

-

 

How old are you when you decide you have to fight? Old enough. Maybe, like your mother used to say, it’s a decision you never really made. Maybe the times made it for you—propaganda posters burned into the backs of your eyelids, Uncle Sam watching you from every street corner, the stories she used to tell you about your father, who died in the spring before you were born. Maybe it was never up to you.          

You want to fight, anyway. Bucky wants to fight, too.         

“It’s not fair,” she says, when you’re twenty-one and the pair of you don’t have to lie your way into shitty bars anymore. You’re sitting on a bench in Central Park, and her elbows are on her knees, and her head is on her hands.          

Bucky sits close to you out of habit. You know this—it’s not for the same reasons people assume as they walk past the pair of you.           

“I wish I was a fella.” You watch her eyes follow a little kid’s boomerang into a tree, and when they turn to look at you, you look away. “Say, you’re lucky, Rogers.”       

“Real lucky.” You pretend to be engrossed in the bark of a maple tree a few feet away. “We’re in the same boat.”         

“No, we’re not.” She blows her bangs out of her eyes and smooths her skirt. “At least you got a chance.”           

Bucky wears dresses. Does she have much of a choice? When she runs, she runs quick, and no skirt is ever going to stop her. She wears ribbons, and she wears lace, and she wears dirt, and sometimes bloodstains. You wear a black eye, sometimes, and sometimes, she has one to match.           

Have you ever told Bucky you love her? Friends are supposed to do that, aren’t they? You wouldn’t know. You’ve never had any friends besides Bucky, and she’s never had any friends besides you. It reminds you of what they say about magnets: opposites attract, except you and Bucky aren’t too different, inside. You’re two halves of a whole, or maybe the two of you are the whole, or—           

“Maybe it’s for the best,” you say. “If you went to fight, the war’d probably be over in about a month.”           

Bucky laughs. You figure that’s close enough, anyway.

 

-

 

“Wanna dance?” Jack asks.           

Bucky dances with her skirt twirling around her legs like a spinning top and her mouth split into a grin that catches like wildfire. The old song ends, the slow-dancing folks in their long dresses and leather shoes step off, and on goes everyone else—the young folks, the poor folks, the quick folks with their oiled hair and spit-slicked heels and clicks, snaps, whistles, hoots. 

You can hardly see her in the bar’s dim yellow light, but then you realize that you’re looking in the first place and your turn your head back to the face you’re sketching on your napkin. 

At first, you think it’s Bucky, but then— 

—but then the nose turns out wrong, and you turn it into Uncle Sam. She’d probably get a kick out of that, you think, Steve fucking Rogers drawing pictures of America when he’s supposed to be dancing with a pretty blonde, and for a second you consider saving it to show her before you tear it into a hundred thin stripes and spread them over the table like a deck of cards.

 

-

 

Bucky tells you that she fucks a boy for the first time when she’s seventeen years old. You don’t believe her for a second. 

The two of you are in your bedroom, and window that leads to the fire escape is still hanging open, and the night is as black as you’ve ever seen it. Bucky’s eyes are dark and shine in the moonlight, and her voice shakes when she tells you. 

“It was unbelievable,” she whispers, and you can’t do anything but look—“I can’t believe it.” Her fingers wrap around your wrists—“I’m not a kid anymore, Steve. I—I did it.” 

You want to ask her who it was, but you don’t really care—Bucky’s shaking, and she’s trying to pass it off as excitement, as one of the side effects of losing one’s virginity, as proof that she’s a woman now and not the skinny girl who punched Tommy McCloud on the playground after he tried to kiss her, but you—you can hear her voice. You know that voice. 

“Yeah?” you ask, and slide next to her on the bed, so your thighs brush. Bucky flinches away, so you pull back, but then her hand drops onto your leg and you can feel her warm breath in your ear. 

“I fucked him,” she whispers. “I—” 

Bucky’s voice cracks, and her hand slips to the waistline of your shorts, but you seize her hand and pull it away, gently, and wrap a careful arm around her shoulders. You’re seventeen years old, just like her, but you’re not the kid people say you are—the lights are off, and your mother is asleep in the next room, but it’s so hot that you get worried when you don’t hear her cough every few minutes. The lights are off, and your mother is asleep, and your bed is warm and wide open, and Bucky’s lips are wet against your jaw, but you’re Steve Rogers, aren’t you? 

“Take it easy, Buck,” you say, and turn your face away. 

In the end, both of you keep your clothes on. In the end, you don’t say anything about the torn edges of Bucky’s skirt and the cut on her lip and the fact that she’s missing a shoe. In the end, Bucky doesn’t cry, just like she never has, but she lets you keep your arm around her until she stops shaking. In the end, the two of you lay on your backs on a bed that’s too small for the both of you, and she holds your hand. 

“We didn’t,” she says, finally. You get the idea that she’s speaking to the darkness more than she’s speaking to you. “He—well, you know I have a mean right hook.” The laugh that follows is watery and means nothing, but you close your eyes and feel her fingers around yours and try not to fall asleep.

 

-

 

You go to the Stark Expo when the two of you are older, and not much wiser. Bucky’s wearing a blue dress because that’s the color of the future, Steve, and you’re wearing a tie that’s sort of greenish-blue-checkered because you want to match but don’t have too many options. You squeeze through the crowd, and stand in front of the stage, and Bucky watches Howard’s hovering red car and you watch her. It crashes, and you flinch, and she laughs. 

“What do you need a flying car for, anyway?” she asks, as the two of you are walking away. “We’re in the middle of a goddamn war. What’re they gonna do, run Nazis over from the sky?” 

You spot the recruiting office because a certain drawing of Uncle Sam is still on your mind, and you feed Bucky some lie about getting something to eat before leaving her standing next to a fountain shaped like a rocket and making your way through the doors. You’re going to try again, no matter what it takes. You’ll say you’re from—you’ll say you’re from Princeton, for God’s sake. It doesn’t matter.  

How does this end? There are a few variations. For the most part, Bucky finds you because, in the end, she always will. 

“Are you stupid?” she asks, raising her voice because she’s a girl and she’s allowed—“Jersey? Give me that—” She snatches another rejection out of your hand. “Goddamn, Steve. You know what? I figured it out. You’re crazy. You’re fucking crazy. You’re gonna get yourself killed, you know that? You—” 

In the end, you’re confused more than angry, because she’s never acted like this bef— 

“Jesus, Bucky,” you say. “It was worth a shot. I just want to help—” 

“Help your country—help your country by getting shot in some ditch? If you even get that far,” Bucky says, and her eyes are gleaming with something that you can’t recognize—“You’ll get scarlet fever before you even—” 

You give her the line about collecting scraps in your little red wagon, and she gives you five more about what a goddamn idiot you are. In the end, it’s probably her voice, loud enough to turn heads to face the pair of you, red-faced and desperate, that attracts Erskine’s attention. 

“There are men laying down their lives,” you say. “I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about m—” 

“Don’t tell me it isn’t about you,” she says. “If it isn’t, then what’s it really about, Steve?” She looks at you and you think you see fear in her eyes. “You tell me this isn’t about you—cause you got nothing to prove, right?” 

You look her in the eyes and tell her that you don’t, and she looks you in the eyes and tells you that dying gasping in the rain because you got no asthma medication isn’t gonna prove anything—if anything, it’s gonna prove that they were right not to let you join. You don’t know why, but that really sets you off—you tell yourself you don’t know why, that you’re embarrassed and angry and tired of being turned down, but you really know that you’re scared because it’s true—that, more likely than not, you’re going to catch pneumonia and die in a hospital, just like your mother, just like your father. Not fighting on the front lines. Not fighting the Nazis. Fighting your own heart, fighting your own battles somewhere in a warm hospital room with three meals a day and a pretty nurse to look after you and no one to hate you but yourself. 

“You’re as good as dead,” she says, finally. “Some help that’ll be to America, ain’t it? Some skinny corpse in a trench. Uncle Sam’s gonna owe you for that one.” She laughs, but it sounds more like a bark to you. 

In the end, you’re confused more than angry, because she’s never acted like this about joining before, and it takes a while and a furious, heel-turning, dress-whipping exit for you to realize that— 

“So,” Erskine says, in another room, where you’re sitting with your jacket off and an uncomfortably familiar folder in front of you. “You want to go overseas, kill some Nazis.” 

He looks up from his papers, looks at you. “Do you want to kill some Nazis?”

 

-

 

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” you say. 

The thought strikes you that you may end up killing yourself. That’s what you want, though, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve always wanted. Maybe not the killing yourself part of it, but the other parts—whatever’s left. The nobility and the sacrifice and your name going down in the history books, the— 

Bucky tells you that your death is nothing. That your death will be scrubbed clean from the face of the earth when she closes her eyes for the last time. Maybe even before that. She’s the only person that’ll ever remember you, Steve Rogers—she’s all that you have left. 

But does that stop you? 

Dr. Erskine says he can offer you a chance.

 

-

 

In this story, you fall in love with a beautiful girl with brown hair and brown eyes and a mean right hook. 

After you pick up the flag and get into the truck, Peggy Carter smiles at you and turns back around, and you smile back, faintly, because you can hardly breathe, you’ve been climbing ropes and crawling through mud and barbed wire and going to sleep in cold dark rooms surrounded by snuffling, snorting, snoring men who could all drop-kick you from here to Tennessee and still have enough breath left to run a mile and fight a war, and you—well, you’re tired. 

Peggy doesn’t smile when she turns around again, but she tells you that no one’s gotten that flag in seventeen years. You know that already, but you appreciate the fact that— 

“Erskine wants to pick you,” she says. “You’re the one.” She smiles after that, but it’s slight and halfway and you wonder if this, too, is a test. “Are you excited?” 

“Excited about what?” you ask. No, _no—_ that’s a dumb question, God, you’re no good at talking to girls, no, _women,_ Peggy’s a woman, look at her, strong and beautiful in a way that you recognize, and you shouldn’t even be thinking about that but the truth is that you can’t talk to girls, never will be able to, even though you don’t think you’ve ever gone a full two hours without talking to Bucky—and there you go again, _Bucky._  

You still feel guilty about not telling her before you left. You deserve to feel guilty about it. You should have taken her with you. You should have— 

“—and—” You and Peggy both realize that you’re not listening at the same moment. The smile doesn’t quite drop off her face. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asks, suddenly. 

_A girl,_ you want to say, but what you really say is, “The war.” You figure that’s close enough, anyway.

           

-

 

Somewhere along the line, you gain a hundred pounds, stumble into a star-spangled suit, acquire a shield, a commanding presence, and the ability to attract women without really trying. And then you look up and find that you’re on a stage, you’re on a _stage_ in front of a crowd, and realize that this isn’t real. This is a disguise. This is the part you’re going to have to play.

 

-

 

The funny thing is, this time around, you’ve got no one to save. 

Your childhood best friend didn’t make it into the army this time around, but you don’t know that she was ever supposed to, so you continue your shtick without asking any questions. Well, you ask a few, but it doesn’t matter; you’re more or less a figurehead, a face to slap on the American front so the folks back home will give a shit about the war beyond glancing at it in the paper before flipping to the funnies section—and every time you do, anyway, they butter you up and slide you back into the suit. 

But can you complain? You’re Captain America, that guy on the stage with the blue eyes and the strong chin, and the crowds love you, and Uncle Sam loves you, and girls come up to you after shows and ask for your autograph and maybe something more, did you notice? You notice, but it’s in the same halfhearted way that you’d notice girls step away from you in elevators when you to the sixth floor with blood staining the collars of your threadbare jackets, the same halfhearted way you’d notice guys pointing at you from across tables at cheap restaurants, and so when every blonde-haired broad comes up to you with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye, you don’t even bat an eyelash, don’t drop the smile, but your mind soars a million miles across the ocean, back to shitty Brooklyn, back to blood-beaked pigeons, back to smoke and spit and gray morning skies. 

(Because, hey. You’re still Steve Rogers. Nothing’s ever going to change.)

           

-

 

“Fuck,” she says. 

You don’t realize that you’ve been staring until her eyes meet yours, and then you can feel the color rise in your cheeks, feel your eyes look away even though your mind is still set on her face. 

“What?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” you say, and when she raises an eyebrow, you add, “I’ve never heard you use that word before.” 

Peggy smiles and looks beyond you, but you imagine, for a second, that your face is still in her mind. 

The two of you are sitting outside in the middle of June. You aren’t supposed to be awake, so a fire is out of the question, and the mosquitoes are out in full force. The two of you are still except for swatting at your arms every few seconds; the air is quiet except for crickets and distant rustling. 

“What?” she asks. “Fuck?” 

“That’s the one,” you say. 

Peggy’s smile is real, now. You’re sitting across from each other and, suddenly, you feel the urge to go sit next to her. 

“You haven’t seen me in the field yet,” she says, picking a splinter off the hem of her skirt. “There’s a whole vocabulary waiting for you to learn it, Rogers.” 

“You’re forgetting where I grew up,” you say, corner of your mouth twitching upwards—just a little—as you remember. “I’m pretty sure my first words were—” 

Somewhere in the forest, an owl hoots; you freeze, and Peggy’s fingers fly to the package sitting at her side. The two of you forget each other for a second, and then the moment passes and you are once again Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, sitting in a dirty camp together with mosquito bites on your wrists and dust in your hair. 

“I’ve seen you shoot a gun,” you say, and try to swat a fly that’s just landed on your elbow—“You’re pretty damn good at that.” 

She’s not smiling, anymore, but her face is still more or less the same—brown eyes that look like they’re just starting to remember something that they’d forgotten long ago. 

“I’ve never seen you shoot a gun,” she says, and normally, you’d be embarrassed. To be honest, you are a little embarrassed about that fact—that Captain America, the nation’s hero, the Germans’ horror, the man who’s punched Adolf Hitler a million and two times—has never killed a man in his life. Has never even touched a gun. You should be embarrassed. Hell, considering all of the Nazis you’ve shot in the movies, using only a gun and a shield, you out to be goddamn ashamed of yourself. 

—but somehow, you don’t mind it too much out here. 

“I can show you how,” she says suddenly, slapping herself on the shoulder and examining her hand for traces of blood—“I think Captain America ought to know that, at least.” 

What do you do? A better question is, what can you do? Peggy Carter makes your heart pound in a way you can’t remember. Her knees are bent beside her, and yours are pulled up to your chest. There are mosquitoes despite the fire, because it is warm and warmer here, and one o’clock in the steaming morning and summertime.

In the end, you smile vaguely at the ground, and then you count to three and take a breath and go and sit beside her.

 

-

 

Things change. 

How long does a war last? Five, six years? This one does. It doesn’t sound like a lot—but then again, you grew up in five or six years. You learned that life wasn’t fair in five or six years. How long are you a part of this war, in a sense? You figure that it’s about two, three years. In a way, two or three years is even more than five or six. You learn a lot in two or three years. You forget a lot in two or three years. 

You learn that Peggy likes her eggs scrambled, and that she has trouble going to sleep but’ll do just fine with some wine and conversation in two or three years. You learn that you can forget the sound of pipes dripping and cars honking all through the night in two or three years. You learn that you can sing pretty well, in two or three years, with the right coaches and just the right amount of lost dignity. You learn that Peggy can’t sing at all, but that she thinks you singing is pretty goddamn hilarious, even though, in all of those two or three years, she never tells you outright.

 

 

-

 

How long does a war last? Five, six years? You only have to stay alive for three. In this war, your life is never on the line; you’re a hero to the people and a dancing monkey to the soldiers, and you play yourself in propaganda films nevertheless. They send you on trips with the men, with Peggy, in Germany, in France—your job is to keep morale up. You never are really able to win them over. You never have a real reason to defy orders and walk thirty-five miles to the HYDRA camp; you never have a real reason to pilot a plane into Arctic ice. 

You, Steve Rogers, survive. When the war ends, you go home with everyone else.

 

-

 

The last word you say in France is “Goodbye.” 

The last words you hear are—well, there are too many men shouting, too many trucks rumbling, and too many people in the way. For a second, you see her mouth move, and then the doors close and all you can see, burned into the back of your mind, is— 

(You don’t say a word until you’re on the flight back to New York.)

 

-

 

“Whatsa matter with you, anyway?” he asks, but he doesn’t lay a finger on you. The bartender is big and red and has a beard that grows thinner and grayer as it travels down his neck. There is jukebox music playing—the same goddamn song has been playing for the last forty-five minutes, on repeat, and the two drunk kids sitting next to it seem to be getting more and more giddy every time they press the buttons. 5A. 5A. 5A. 

“Nothing,” you say, and you open your mouth again, after the word is done, because you feel another one coming—but then you see his eyes, and the napkins sitting in their metal cage at the end of the bar, and the gleaming wood floor that is polished and beautiful like you’ve never seen it before. 

“Get a lot of folks around here?” you ask. 

“Nah,” he says, setting a fist on the counter. “This place has seen better days.”

“You redid the floor,” you say, setting your glass down.

Was that the wrong thing to say? The man looks at you strangely after that—not for a minute, not for two minutes. He looks at you, and you can feel him taking you in. You know the feeling. You know what’s happening. You know that your eyes are blue and your hair is blonde and there is a certain shape to your face, and even in this dim light your chin is near-unmistakable, but maybe—

“Aren’t you—?”

For a second, there is silence, and it is louder than any sound. It goes on forever, for a million years, until it sounds like music for just half a second—and then, just as you begin to hear the footsteps and the hollers, just as you begin see a familiar twirl out of the corner of your eye, there is a click and 5A fills the room again.

 

-

 

Your face is still plastered all over Brooklyn. 

The pages are yellowing and the edges are peeling away, but you’re there, aren’t you?—staring, saluting, smiling your million-dollar smile. Do people still recognize you? Sometimes, no; sometimes, yes. The thing is—the thing is, Steve Rogers, you don’t look a goddamn thing like the man on the posters. He is smiling. What have you done to make the world lose its glow like a dull gutter penny? All you’ve done is stand on stages and sing and walk through forests and fields in the summertime with tired men and pretty women. And still— 

In the end, it’s staring you in the face. You know what you have to do. You know what you have to do, and you know what you want to do, and it’s not always the same thing, is it? 

In the end, you do what you—

 

-

 

“Bucky Barnes... Barnes. Barnes. Father, Peter Barnes? That big man—a real scary man. None of his jackets seemed to—oh, Jesus, it’s coming back to me now.” She moves around in the crowded room, peering into shelves and underneath desks. “Oh, Lord Jesus, it’s been a long time. How long have you been away? Jesus, you look different—I can hardly believe you’re still Steve Rogers. Jesus! What happened to that tiny fella with the big eyes?”

She stops at a cupboard stuffed beneath a crumbling bookcase. “Didn’t tell me much when she moved away. Sent me a letter, though—just one—right after she moved. Mostly to tell me about the rats she’d been keeping in the kitchen closet—but—let’s see. Here it is.”

 

-

 

“Seventeen,” Bucky says. “Can you believe that? Jesus Christ!” 

“Buck,” you say, and your voice is a warning. “We’re gonna get caught.”

“Seventeen,” she murmurs, but her voice is softer and her eyes are on you, kneeling in the darkness. You push the door open just a sliver, and a long, slanting bar of yellow light stripes the walls of the closet. “I can’t—”

“Do you wanna get yelled at?” You look at her, and then you think about it for a second. “Ma’s gonna kill me if she—”

“Jesus, Steve. I don’t think you—”

“Shh!” Your eye, the one eye that’s poking out of the closet, goes wide as a dinner plate, and you yank the door shut and push yourself against the corner where Bucky is sitting, wearing your old shorts and frozen still beside you, fingers clenched around a bouquet of wilting dandelions.

“Are they still there?” she whispers, breath ghosting against your cheek in the dark.

Bucky’s eleven when she says she’s never gonna get married, no, never gonna wear lipstick. She’s not gonna go to college, never gonna wear a skirt. She’ll fight. Yeah, she’s gonna cut her hair and join the army right next to you, Steve-o, and together you’ll be unstoppable.

 

-

 

It’s a nice place. It really is. It’s not the nicest place you’ve ever been in, but it’s pretty goddamn nice—the floor is mostly clean, and the walls are patchy, but the pale-green paint reminds you of springtime, no, summertime, early-morning dew in the grass around the schoolyard blacktop and penny candy in sweaty fists and the way the sun looked poking behind those ancient bricks.

You—you’re nervous. You feel like an idiot, standing in the hallway with a bouquet of roses, and your heart beating so fast in your chest you’d swear you haven’t changed a day—but then you shift your footing, shift your grasp on the paper wrapper around the roses—ten, all red, because they remind you of something else and ten is a nice round number—and then you see your hands, and your feet, and feel the weight of your shoulders, and you know that—

(Bucky never liked flowers.)

What are you expecting? Honest-to-goodness, what are you expecting? You’ve plotted out a few scenarios in your head, and every one of them makes you squirm. One, the door opens and you aren’t recognized at all—what would you do then? You don’t even want to think about it. Two, the door opens and you are beaten to the floor and kicked in the face—what about that? You’d take the beating. You deserve it. Even the dirty parts, the finger-stepping and the hair-pulling. You would.

And then there’s three—the door opens and—well, the door opens and you do what you’ve been wanting to do for most of your entire goddamn life.

You’re standing in the hallway with a bouquet of roses and your heart beating so fast in your chest you’d swear you haven’t changed a day. You take a breath and count to three and then you press the doorbell.

 

-

 

The door doesn’t open.

The door doesn’t open. You stand outside the door and it stays firmly shut—no sound from the other end except for empty ringing. You stand outside the door and you don’t hear a  thing, and you can feel the flowers wilting in your sweaty fist. Your heart is beating so fast you feel like you’re gonna—

“Hel—”

And suddenly five years is six years. And six years is ten years, and six years is a hundred years, and six years is a million years—and suddenly, five years, six years is forever.

 

-

 

Bucky stands in the doorway for longer than you’d like to admit. Your heart slows down faster than hers does, which goes against everything you’ve ever known, and you still can’t look at her. All you see are pieces—eyes, feet, the color of the belt around her waist, the curls at the ends of her hair.

You feel like you’ve been punched in the gut. You can’t—           

“You goddamn fucking _idiot,”_ Bucky says—and then you can’t feel the flowers in your hand anymore, can’t feel the winter chill through the thin walls, can’t feel anything but soft skin and damp eyelashes and starched blue fabric against you, around you, enveloping you.

           

-

 

Bucky’s apartment reminds you of your mother’s. The way she moves in it seems familiar—you’re half-expecting her to make a right at the end of the entry hallway and take her muddy shoes off and yell _hey Mrs. Rogers_ and wash her hands, bloody or dusty or stained with bicycle-chain grease, pass you the soap, drag you to the checkered-tablecloth dinner table and tell your mother that she’s the best goddamn cook in the world, maybe with better words, definitely with the charm that always surrounded Bucky—

“Christ,” Bucky says, and waits for you to step into the kitchen before she follows. “Jesus Christ. I—” She brushes her hair out of her eyes, and you realize that she’s red in the face. “You want something to drink? Water?” Another look at you. “Beer?”

You stare at her face, too long, and then you say no—no, you’re fine. Well, just some water—some water would be fine.

“Sure,” she says, and opens a cupboard and reaches up onto the top shelf to pick out a glass. “You can—you go into the living room. It’s dirty in here—sorry about the mess.” She smiles at you, but it’s fast and tight, and your fingers twitch. “Just—down the hall and make a left.”

You swallow, and you swallow, and you swallow. And you stare. The two of you are standing five feet apart in a kitchen that’s too big for the both of you, and this is like one of those things in coloring books—the _what’s wrong with this picture?_ pages. Bucky smiles at you again, but you can’t—

“Where should I—?”

“Oh, flowers. Just give them to me, or—no, just leave them there. I’ll find a vase to put them in.”

The living room is small, and the walls are painted pale eggshell-blue. There are two raggedy couches, and a lamp, and a radio in the seat of honor on the coffee table in the center of the room, and photographs hanging on the space beside one of the couches. You can’t sit down, so you don’t. You look at the pictures, standing a foot away, like you’re in a museum.

There is a picture of Bucky’s mother; you remember her, vaguely, but more than anything, you recognize her because she looks like Bucky. Brown hair, just a little wavy—strong chin, brown eyes. There is a picture of Bucky from when she was a little girl—this one is a better photograph, taken in a studio, probably, ages ago, and she’s sitting next to a teddy bear and smiling faintly. There’s a picture of a man that you don’t recognize, standing next to Bucky—arm around Bucky. This one is recent; here, she looks older; here, they’re smiling.

 

 

-

 

Bucky comes in with a two glasses of water. You’re still looking at the photograph.

“Who’s that?” you ask.

Bucky sets the glasses down on the table and looks at both of the sofas for half a second before sitting down in the one closer to you.

“Jesus, sit down,” she says, and her voice sounds—almost far away, you think. “I wanna get a good look at you.”

You listen to her; the sofa squeaks under your weight, and suddenly it seems so much smaller when you’re closer to Bucky. Your knees almost touch. She pulls her legs up beside her, flat shoes staying on the ground, and props her elbow against the side. You sit straight, as you always have, because that’s how your mother taught you to sit, and—well, does there always have to be another reason why?

You look a Bucky. Bucky looks at you.

“Jesus Christ, Buck,” you say, at the same time she says “Fuck,” and the both of you laugh a little, but really—

(You don’t touch your glass of water, and you don’t take your coat off.)

“I thought you were smaller,” she says. That makes you smile, a little

“I thought you were bigger,” you say, and the smile sticks on your face like plaster; “I swear I could pick you up now.”

“Don’t try it,” she says, and looks at her hands.

You smile, again, and don’t meet her eyes. Bucky’s shoes are white and crystal-clean.

“You got a nice place,” you say. “Real nice.” You look up at her, now, and her eyes are fixed on yours, and your voice is a tightrope. The look in Bucky’s eyes changes and you—you open your mouth to speak, and all that comes out is “Course, we never really gave a—we never really cared, did we?”

Bucky doesn’t smile at you. She is sitting so close to you that your knees are touching, now—knees that are exposed under her dress, knees that you’ve seen a thousand times but have never seen as white and washed as they are now.

The winter sun is evenly centered through the window.

The ends of Bucky’s hair are perfectly curled—upwards, evenly, like the mouths on a million smiley faces.

“Bucky, I—I know it’s too late to say this, but—” You swallow. “I’m sorry.” Your voice falters a little. “I don’t blame you if you don’t—”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Steve,” Bucky says, and then she slides across the sofa and—

 

 

-

 

To tell the truth, you’ve never kissed a girl in your life. To tell the truth, you’d never have admitted that to anyone except for Bucky, and she’d never have believed you anyway, but you’ve never so much as touched a girl in your life. And you never really planned on it, mostly because every girl you’d ever come across could circle your wrists with her thumb and little finger, and you never thought you’d be any good at it, anyway, and—

Bucky kisses with tongue and teeth and her fingers scraping across your stubble and this is not how you imagined it, ever—in movies, it was always different, romance and Sinatra crooning in the background, stars twinkling, candlelight. And now you’re sitting in a clean apartment in a dirty city, with pictures hanging on the walls and a sun that’s going to set faster than it rises and a fading nervous sweat still sticking your shirt to your skin, and this is not how you read it in any books—where is your _the end_ , your happily ever after? But you, Steve Rogers, know that you’re not a story-book hero— you’re just a kid from Brooklyn who grew up in a dirty city tossing newspapers on stoops at five in the morning and pouring your best friend’s cheap beer on your scraped knees, and you—you’re the kind of guy to take what he gets.

You slide your hand across the side of Bucky’s face, little finger dragging against her jawbone, and kiss her back in the only way you know how.

 

 

-

 

What happened to you in the war?

The funny thing is, you have no scars from the war. You’ve seen action—not very close, but you’ve seen it, and you’ve gone through the forests and the rocks and the barbed wire just like everyone else. You ought to have something—a scrape, a scratch, a scab that still hasn’t’ healed—but no, your body is a blank slate. The war could’ve not happened at all, not exist at all—except for the memories you have, and the shape of your face, and the look in your eyes, and your face hanging on every drugstore storefront from here to San Francisco.

The funny thing is, Steve Rogers, you’re covered in scars. They are old scars, faded scars, scars from so long ago that you shouldn’t be able to look at them and count off the places where you got them.

“Jesus,” Bucky holds the cigarette away from her face and exhales. “Jesus Christ.”

She touches the lines on your collarbones, fingers dipping into the late-afternoon sunlight that’s slanting and golden, and traces the pale line that arches across your shoulder. You remember that one—high school, gym class. Big kid, baseball player, green eyes that were gray in the fluorescent lights reflecting off the yellow gymnasium floor.

“You’re a mess,” Bucky says, but there is something soft in her voice that you can’t remember ever being there before.

You’re almost afraid to look at her—stretched out on the sofa with her dress pooled in a heap next to you on the floor. Bucky, with her glowing skin and her cigarette and her brown eyes and—Jesus Christ, you think, and you touch her knee and hope the world isn’t going to come crashing down around you.

“So are you,” you say. “I haven’t seen your hair this clean in my whole life.”

“Shut it, Rogers,” she says, and runs her fingers through your hair again even though you already look like you just got out of bed. “Not all of us got to live in five-star hotels with gorgeous girls and Uncle Sam next door.”

“Gorgeous girls, sure,” you say, and you can’t say anything after that, so you sniff as disdainfully as you can manage and turn around a little bit, rest your head against the armrest. “Wouldn’t have looked at me twice before.”

“Probably would have,” Bucky says. “You were always a goddamn sight back then.” She takes another drag of her cigarette and sinks down against the cushions. “Still are, actually.”

“Look at you,” you say, at the same time she says the same thing, and suddenly your heart aches when you do look at—

“Sometimes I think about what it’d be like if you never left,” Bucky says. “And I know it’s selfish. Because it’s what you—”

“It wasn’t what I wanted,” you say—quickly, because you’ve been waiting for this. “I wanted it before, but now—”

Bucky has scars, too. Fewer than you, but you knew that already. Her hands are covered with them, palms streaked with pale lines. There is a long scratch on her side that starts on her thigh and ends by her belly button. You know better than to touch it.  

“Everything would be different,” she says. “I fucked up, Steve. You fucked up, too, but I—”

“Bucky—”

“It’s just that—” Bucky’s voice cracks—“Sometimes I think about it, all of it, and it makes no goddamn sense. They should have—you know, I don’t—” Her fingers move in her lap, pressed against her bare thighs. And then she looks at you, and she leans down to kiss you, and you realize that her hands are shaking. The sunlight catches on something on her left h—

“You should have stayed,” she says, mouth, eyes wet against the side of your face. You don’t remember her being so much smaller than you. “Why didn’t you stay?”

 

 

 -

 

There is a picture of Bucky from when she was a little girl—this one is a better photograph, taken in a studio, probably, ages ago, and she’s sitting next to a teddy bear and smiling faintly.

There’s a picture of a man that you don’t recognize, standing next to Bucky—arm around Bucky’s waist. This one is recent; here, she looks older; here, they’re smiling.

 

 

-

 

It’s October when your mother dies.

You’re eighteen, and your twelve year-old cousins from Maine are still taller than you. Everyone’s crying, but you’re not—you know this isn’t really happening. Maybe it’s happened before, and maybe it’ll happen again, but your ma really isn’t gone. She’s only out of sight, you know, as they let her into the earth.

You take a cab ride home, and Bucky sits next to you in the backseat so her thigh touches yours. Neither of you says anything, but you can feel Bucky watching you look out the window. Do you say anything to her? A better question is can you say anything to her? She doesn’t say anything to you. You fix your eyes on fire hydrants and changing streetlights and tell yourself that it doesn’t matter, anyway.

You pay for your cab with your aunt’s money, and the two of you walk up the stairs to your apartment.

Bucky stands in the doorway and watches you walk into the middle of your living room—one sofa, one chair, patchy rug, dusty window. She has her hands at her sides and her hair done up, and she’s shivering. Both of you are; the heat hasn’t been on in days.

You sit down on the sofa and it barely makes a sound.

Bucky steps inside and closes the door, and she walks through the apartment, slowly, and stops in front of you, in the living room. She looks thinner and paler than you’ve ever seen her, and there’s a bruise on her jaw that’s ugly purple-yellow.

Bucky turns on the radio.

There’s sunlight falling through the curtains, because they’re thin and old, and it shines faintly on Bucky when she sits on the sofa next to you. You’re shivering, and she’s shivering, and she sits so close to you that your thighs touch, and your elbows touch, and your shoulders touch. You swear you can feel her heart beating.

Your hair is combed, and your rental-jacket is slightly stained, and she’s wearing a dress that has a tear in the side and flowers all over the front. You only notice the tear in the side when she stands up and reaches her hand out to you.

“Get up,” she says.

“Bucky—”

In the end, you get up. It doesn’t take a long time for her face and her hand and her eyes to convince you—but then again, has it ever? You get to your feet and Bucky takes your hands and puts them on her waist, and you flinch away even though it didn’t matter before—she’d press up against you when you were hiding in ratty alleys and under stoops, so close you could taste her breath, and it—

“Come on,” she says. “I’m gonna show you how to dance.”

“I can’t—”

“This is a good song,” she says, even you don’t recognize it beyond the sound of the voice. Ella Fitzgerald?—maybe Billie Holiday. You can't remember whether Bucky actually likes this music or not. “Come on, before it ends.”

In the end, you learn that Bucky doesn’t know much about dancing besides what she’s seen in the few movies she’s managed to sneak into. She fits her arms around your shoulders and they go around farther than they ought to, but you keep your hands on her waist, and close your eyes, and listen to the music, and try not to think about anything except for not stepping on her feet.


End file.
